Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0, a lightweight Gentoo-based distribution designed for web kiosks: "I'm happy to announce Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0 which is now available for download. This is a major kiosk release which brings a number of new features, package upgrades and security fixes. The Linux kernel has been updated to 3.18.8 while Firefox sticks to the ESR channel which is intended for large organizations such as universities, governments and businesses and is numbered as 31.5.0. All packages from the userland which are living in the Gentoo stable branch are upgraded to the snapshot tagged on 20150301. Aside from the package upgrades, Porteus Kiosk 3.3.0 brings exciting new features which are implemented in the kiosk wizard and the ISO image itself. The most notable ones are: introduced central management function which allows to remotely control multiple kiosk PCs from single configuration file stored on your server...." Here is the complete release announcement. Download (MD5): Porteus-Kiosk-3.3.0-i486.iso (61.0MB, pkglist), Porteus-Kiosk-UEFI-3.3.0-i486.iso (61.0B).

David Purse has announced the availability of Simplicity Linux 15.4 beta, a lightweight Puppy-based distribution - now also available in a 64-bit flavour: "Simplicity Linux 15.4 alpha is now available for download. This release cycle marks the start of a new chapter for Simplicity: you can now get our releases in 32-bit or 64-bit editions. The 32-bit edition is based on the superb Puppex, and the 64-bit edition is based on LXPup64, a distro we have admired for a long time. At the moment there is no alpha release for the 64-bit Desktop Simplicity Linux because we've been having a few issues with it. However, there will be a 64-bit Desktop edition for the beta release. It should also be noted that these alpha releases are very rough. Things will change between these releases and the beta releases. Some features that are available in the 32-bit editions aren't available in the 64-bit editions." Read the full release announcement for further information. Download (MD5): Desktop154Alpha-32.iso (645MB), Netbook154Alpha-32.iso (435MB), Netbook154Alpha64.iso (366MB).

The third pre-release of Manjaro Linux 0.9.0 is now available for testing. This is a major upgrade, featuring a new system installer called Calamares, the brand-new Xfce 4.12, and a separate edition with KDE Plasma Desktop 5.2. From the release announcement "Almost one month passed since our last preview of our next stable release, Manjaro 0.9.0. This build ships Xfce most closely to the upcoming 4.12 release. Thunar file manager finally supports tabs and other cool features like inverting the selection, it improves on location handling and the shortcuts side pane. On the panel we have now a popup calendar and support for time zones. The settings area has improved display settings with the ability to clone displays via the GUI and other basic monitor management options. Last but not least, the window manager has smart placement optimizations for determining the best area to place a new window." See also the release announcement for the KDE edition. Download links: manjaro-xfce-0.9.0-pre3-x86_64.iso (1,437MB, SHA256, pkglist), manjaro-kde-0.9.0-pre3-x86_64.iso (1,662MB, SHA256).

The seemingly endless development of Elive, a Debian-based distribution with a customised Enlightenment desktop, continues with yet another beta release, version 2.5.8: "The Elive team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 2.5.8. This new version includes: kernel - much improved optimizations to be smaller, faster, and more optimized, a good amount of patches are also included to improve stability even more; more options to select in the boot process for special machines unable to boot correctly, like some rare Intel cards; touchpad - automated detections and special configurations included; clickpads has the bottom zone disabled so you are not annoyed anymore by having your mouse moving while you click; tap to click - by default Debian does not have this feature enabled but now it works again in Elive, just tap in your touchpad and you will have a click; scrolling - you can scroll vertically and horizontally using two fingers...." Continue to the release announcement for the rest of the changelog. Download: elive_2.5.8_beta_hybrid.iso (2,361MB, MD5, pkglist).

Michael Tremer has announced the release of IPFire 2.17 Core 87, a major new update of the project's specialist distribution for firewalls, featuring an updated kernel and GRUB 2 bootloader: "This is the official release announcement for IPFire 2.17 - Core Update 87, a new major version of the IPFire firewall distribution coming with all sorts of new features and bug fixes. Most of the work has been done under the hood and in the Linux kernel. This has been updated to version 3.14 and brings better support for various hardware and stability fixes. Various device drivers have been backported from more recent versions of the Linux kernel to combine great stability with best hardware support. Stability for various ARM platforms has been improved and support for more has been added. Among the new devices are the Banana Pi and Banana Pro boards. Please check out the list of supported ARM boards on the IPFire wiki. The installer program that helps to install IPFire has been very much improved." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog. Download: ipfire-2.17.i586-full-core87.iso (154MB, SHA1, pkglist).

Barry Kauler has announced the release of Quirky 7.0, a minimalist, experimental desktop Linux distribution originally forked from Puppy Linux - now also available for the x86_64 architecture: "I created Puppy Linux back in 2003, but there was never a toolchain for compiling Puppy completely from source. Instead, Puppy is built from binary packages of another distro, plus PET packages compiled natively. We did use the T2 system right back at Puppy v2. In early 2015, I tackled the formidable task of compiling everything in T2, and I had to introduce 105 new packages into T2. It took a couple of months, but I eventually was able to compile every package required for Quirky. T2 is able to compile for various CPU targets, and the proof of concept was when I compiled for an x86_64 CPU (all previous builds had been for i686). I was able to build a x86_64-based Quirky, and it works the same as the i686 build." See the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download (MD5): april64-7.0.iso (168MB), april64-7.0-8gb.img.xz (139MB).

Anke Boersma has announced the release of KaOS 2015.02, a brand-new version of the project's rolling-release Linux distribution featuring the Plasma 5 desktop: "KaOS is very proud to announce the availability of the February release of a new stable ISO image. This release brings the end of KDE 4 as the default Desktop Environment for KaOS. Almost ten months ago work started to fully migrate to Frameworks 5, Plasma 5-based distribution and with the release of Plasma 5.2.1 this migration is now deemed ready to bring a better user experience then KDE 4. From the unset of this migration there was never a plan to mix the two environments. What you will see on this ISO is a pure Plasma 5-based environment. As many might have noted KDE Applications 14.12 did not contain more then a handful of Plasma 5 applications. Just about all applications that users have become used to seeing in a KDE 4 version are available as a Plasma 5 port. A few are not ready yet, and those will be missing from the KaOS repositories until their ports are ready for daily use." Here is the full release announcement with screenshots. Download: KaOS-2015.02-x86_64.iso (1,398MB, MD5, pkglist).

Tails 1.3, a new version of the live distribution designed for anonymous Internet browsing via the Tor network, is out. Among the new features is the inclusion of Electrum, a lightweight Bitcoin client: "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.3, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible. New features: Electrum is an easy-to-use Bitcoin wallet, you can use the Bitcoin client persistence feature to store your Electrum configuration and wallet; the Tor Browser has additional operating system and data security, this security restricts reads and writes to a limited number of folders; the obfs4 pluggable transport is now available to connect to Tor bridges, pluggable transports transform the Tor traffic between the client and the bridge to help disguise Tor traffic from censors; Keyringer lets you manage and share secrets using OpenPGP and Git from the command line." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download: tails-i386-1.3.iso (910MB, torrent, pkglist).

Steve Revill has announced the availability of a new version of RISC OS Open, a special edition of RISC OS designed for the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. RISC OS is an operating system designed specifically to run on the ARM chipset; it is not based on UNIX, Linux or any other existing system. From the release announcement: "Today marks the availability of the very latest beta release candidate for the popular Raspberry Pi educational platform. This ROM now includes support for the Mark 2 Model B Raspberry Pi hardware, using the newer BCM2836 system on chip and a total of 1 GB of RAM. The model A, B, and B+ are still supported too. This follow-up to the earlier RC12 is in fact RC14 and includes the following headline changes in addition to the Mark 2 Model B support: the kernel now understands and can render sprites with alpha levels of transparency, and hence the desktop can use these facilities too; the kernel now supports a much wider array of pixel buffer formats for the screen including 4k and 64k...." See also the brief release notes. Download (MD5) the compressed SD card image from here: riscos-2015-02-17.14.zip (99.9MB).

Peter Baldwin has announced the release of ClearOS 6.6.0 "Community" edition, a CentOS-based Linux distribution for cloud-connected servers and gateways designed for homes, hobbyists and small organisations: "ClearOS Community 6.6.0 final has arrived! Along with the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements, this release introduces WPAD, QoS, YouTube School ID support, an upgrade to the Intrusion Detection engine, and ISO-to-USB key support. With the upcoming ClearOS 7 release, some of the features in the beta have been migrated to the ClearOS 7 roadmap, notably WordPress, Joomla!, Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, Vtiger and SugarCRM. The following is a list of new features in ClearOS Community 6.6.0: QoS YouTube School ID support; WPAD (paid app); Intrusion Detection engine upgrade; ISO-to-USB key support. Since the last release, the following apps have been released: ownCloud for Home; ownCloud for Business." Read the brief release announcement and check out the more detailed release notes for more information and links to changelogs. Download: clearos-community-6.6-x86_64-DVD.iso (953MB, MD5, pkglist).

Cecil Watson has announced the release of LinHES 8.3, an updated release of the project's specialist Arch-based distribution designed for set-top boxes and home entertainment computers - now complete with the new Kodi media centre: "The LinHES development team is pleased to announce the release of LinHES R8.3. LinHES R8.3 brings updates to the kernel, system libraries, NVIDIA drivers, the latest MythTV 0.27.4 fixes, and many other parts of LinHES. LinHES R8.3 now includes the option to install Plex Home Theater. Additionally XBMC has been updated to Kodi. Related issues: bug #983 - xscreensaver missing some screen savers; bug #985 - missing shared libraries for zoneminder; feature #981 - add Plex Home Theater; feature #982 - add PowerPanel for CyberPower UPS; feature #984 - LinHES Tools in Service Menu; feature #986 - xconfig.sh should detect and install NVIDIA and legacy driver; feature #988 - update XBMC to Kodi...." See the release announcement and release notes for further information and upgrade instructions. Download the live DVD image from here: LinHES_R8.3.iso (818MB, MD5).